Hirst Show at Gagosian Shredded

Artnet is featuring a review by Jerry Saltz of Damien Hirst's most recent showing at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. I should mention early that Saltz is an art critic for the Village Voice (where the article was first published) which, for anyone not familiar with New York periodicals, is a good but rather progressive paper to put it mildly. Saltz really digs into Hirst and for good reason. Hirst's more recent work lacks any of the real creativity and daring that has given him his reputation. Perhaps most interesting is Saltz's explanation for how the currently inflated art market has resulted in all of Hirst's new work being sold:

"Every painting is sold, which isn't surprising in these times when collectors buy what other collectors buy, advisers sell art over the phone and artists wonder if their prices should be higher. Buyers get a placeholder: A painting by a big name with a big price tag that presumably will command an even higher resale value. Hirst & Co. have created a perfidious feedback loop where everyone gets to snicker at everyone else. We sneer at Hirst, his dealers and his collectors for having bad taste and bad values; they scoff at us for being old-fashioned, out-of-the-money sourpusses. We all tell ourselves what we already know. The only thing at stake is gamesmanship."

So long as the market is hot, artists will profit and we can probably expect the quality in art to slide because artists can't meet the demand of dealers and collectors. Instead of taking their time to create a few great works a year, their pumping out works as fast as they can to receive their handsome rewards. And dealers are more than happy to oblige. So who really loses? Well, the collector for one but that's their fault for buying second rate (if that) art and the art world suffers insofar as it remains stagnant and stasis is bad for art. Art should always be moving in some direction, any direction, but never standing still.